not native fruit

suze rotolo: memory lane

I read online a few weeks ago that Suze Rotolo had died about a month ago, age 67.  Of course, I recognized her famous photo on the 'The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan' album, and learned that she has written a memoir called 'A Freewheelin' Time.'  I picked it up at the library, and soon bought my own copy. 

What a trip down Memory Lane!  Not just the folk-music scene stuff - yes, that was somewhat meaningful to me, since I was an afficianado of the genre at the time, in the early sixties, before it had become 'popular' among my peers.  No!  What I found fascinating was just the story of her life - THAT was what I could really relate to.  Her socialist-oriented parents (a polite way of saying 'communist'), her humble working-class origins (in Queens), the fact that she initially took the subway to Greenwich Village to 'connect,' her problems at school (just like mine!), her life in the old 'bohemian' style, her work creating sets in off (and off-off)-Bwy theatre productions, her natural artistry which manifested in her clothing innovations and jewelry - I could relate to all of that, I suppose because I did all of that! - a few years after Suze, and in another city.  Maybe it was the times, but it wasn't what was happening in our community - I kind of had to go out and find it.  And yet, in another way, I guess I could say I was tuned in to my times.  Anyway, her story sure brought back memories for me!

Also, I shared her experience of being emotionally and sexually connected with a very unusual artist who initially seemed very much on his own, in need of a friend shall we say, but soon became 'attractive' to 'everyone' and who was intimately tied up with notoriety and 'fame' - ye gods, spare us that albatross - and who desired a very different lifestyle from what suited me.  We both had the courage to walk away from what wasn't working for us, to find our own lives, so I could relate to much of what she wrote about that too.

I've taken a look at some of her more recent book-art at Medialia Gallery - I think Suze Rotolo is my new patron saint!

devi and me

Over at my Great-Grandmother's Blog I recently posted this:

i've been thinking lately that it might make more sense to tell people that my mother was a kind of creole.  Doing research, i've discovered that academics identify a group centered in the chesapeake bay area as 'atlantic creoles.'  the atlantic creoles are a simiar ethnic makeup to the well-known louisiana creoles - french, english, spanish, african american, native american and sometimes caribbean.

Links to information about creole people can be found here:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louisiana_Creole_people

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creole_peoples

www.frenchcreoles.com/CreolesWeAre.html - this is a nice one with music, slide-show, videos, etc

Atlantic Creoles can be searched on Wikipedia, yielding lots of links, although they do not have a page devoted to them.  I first came across the term in a text on the Atlantic slave trade when I was researching my African roots.

I know I've said before that I am grateful to all my ancestors for leading me on a search for them because I've learned so much about the world, especially Africa, Native America, and all places with so-called mixed-race populations.  I've met so many wonderful people online through the course of the journey too.

But I think the single most significant discovery I have made so far has been to re-connect with the Moorish Science Temple, to read their original teachings and realize how I absorbed them at my mother's knee.  This has always been my 'true' spiritual education, despite the fact that, on a conscious level, my mother tried to make me into a Catholic, something I continuously found to be at odds with my own spiritual experience and nature, and which I struggled with for years, and made various sorts of peace with, only to feel dissatisfied at the core.  When I studied theology at GTU, I was very fortunate that the feminist movement was active at the time, because I found people who could hear me say that I felt my real spirituality had come to me from my mother's line, and was not from 'the church' but seemed, rather, to 'ride' along with it, rather like I was doing with Catholicism at the time.  The feminists agreed that women had their own spirituality, although what they meant, and what I meant, by that phrase were not exactly identical.  What I know now is that my mother had a dual religious upbringing - one in the Catholic church, which was the societally-validated norm (in highly Irish-Catholic Philadelphia), and the Moorish Science Temple, which her father's church of choice.

My reconnection with the Moorish Science teachings and my almost irrational drive to find out 'the secret' and reconnect with my roots leads directly to my present spiritual path, with Amma,and Devi spirituality, out of south India.  My grandfather would be thrilled, and as for me, I feel ever-so-much, at long last, at home.

red cedar basket

 

I received this red cedar basket in the mail yesterday from my friend, artist Mary Snowden of Anacortes, Washington, ceremonial weaver and sculptor.  I had commissioned the basket and requested a dragonfly theme, because of a very early dragonfly experience i had myself at about age five that has stayed with me.  i was standing back in the marshes, where i was not supposed to go alone, of course, and was visited by a very large, camoflage-colored dragonfly with heavily netted wings.  He perched on my upper arm, covering almost the entire length of it, and I had no idea what it was.  It was a sort of alien-encounter for me, and I was terrified. We stood that way together for what seemed forever.  I finally closed my eyes and prayed that it would go away, and when I opened my eyes it was gone.  I felt relieved, but kind of missed it too. i felt a very deep curiosity about its identity and nature.  It was a sort of heightened experience of the marshes and of nature in that environment, and also of the deep mysteriousness and terror of life.

Here is what Mary wrote to me about the basket: 

"Dragonfly and the Four Directions" basket 2010

(Red Cedar Bark, Raffia, Dentailium shells (a symbol of wealth and memory, precontact, on the NW Coast here it was First Peoples trade 'money'), Green Wooden Beads, Fire polished Glass, Carnelian Beads, Mother of Pearl Beads, Glass Beads, Trade Beads.) 

"The Dragonfly is an ally through mysterious times and will show us the way through illusion, and lead us ultimately to our own inner truths.  Dragonfly medicine is very important. Dragonfly's can be found on every continent of our Mother Earth.  They are a precious part of our Mother Earth's gift to us as one of our winged significant teachers and helpers.  Thank you Dragonfly.

"Red Cedar Bark is sacred and essentially priceless.  Not every cedar tree can be gathered from, making it rarer.  Then after the bark is gathered traditionally ( a good hike in the forest), it sets for one year.  Then the process of slowly paring it both horizontally, and vertically begins.

"The cedar is very powerful when gathered from a living tree, which continues to live, and essentially, your basket is alive.  There is a saying here on the Northwest Coast in Indian Country, "Be good to your cedar, and your cedar will be good to you" It is the considered the most sacred 'powe/healing' element here in the NW, and cedar storage boxes are used to house ceremonial items.  It is also is the symbol of Red face Paint (the healers). The inner bark of the red tree can only be separated from the tree, only a few weeks of the year.  Any other time, it is solid wood, with no divisions in its tree Cambrian.  During this special time, it separates itself for the people.  It is highly revered."

I found what Mary wrote about the dragonfly to be very meaningful.  i've read quite a few 'takes' on the dragonfly's medicine, but this one certainly rings true to me, and has been proved out in my life as I approach sixty.  An interesting age for this basket to come to my home.

 

my mystery novel and spiritual artistry

hello, everyone, i am finally ready to 'reveal to the world' that i have finally completed the writing of my mystery novel.  i think i may have mentioned the novel here on the blog once before, but have not mentioned it again for quite some time primarily because i wasn't sure whether i was really going to be able to pull it together in the end.

well, it looks like i have, and by that i mean that i feel pretty good about it, have ironed out rough areas, chosen best versions, synthesized, cut, improved, and re-read it myself with pleasure after such a long absence from it that it seems to have been authored by someone else, and have found i feel satisfied enough to expose it to the light of day.  (I will self-publish it, of course.) 

by the way, there is quite an interesting discussion going on over at the cassandra pages (look for the link on my sidebar) right now about the virtues of free online versus self publication and/or conventional publication. 

but before i get into the many issues of publication, i just want to express a few things about what writing the book has meant to me as a spiritual artist.

for starters, writing this book has been like making one long prayer.  i've tried to fit in a lot of what i've loved and what has enriched my own life, i've tried to express my spiritual vision of life, and some of the problems that have confronted that vision in my own life.  I've written the novel with love, devotion, dedication and pleasure.  at times, i've had to work on it like someone condemned to the mines as well.

no children or animals are harmed in my book.  i found it rather challenging to write a mystery novel in which no one is killed or materially harmed, but i think i've managed to pull it off.  at one point, several years ago, i was in a writing group with the project for a while, and the folks there thought the book was a page-turner.  that's supposed to be a virtue in a mystery novel, so that's all right. 

the group was not really meant for anything as tawdry and pedestrian as a mystery novel, but my work was tolerated, critiqued, helped, complicated, confused and chewed up, but in the end most of what was offered was useful, and i was later able to go forward with the project on my own, which in the end, is i guess how it has to be.  friends have read it, but friends 'like' everything, right?  so the group, the exposing of oneself to the anvil of other literati, was undoubtedly helpful.

when i was younger, i was a 'deep thinker' kind of gal, the kind of gal who read dostoevsky in high school, tolstoy for pleasure.  it's no wonder i studied theology and became an expert in the area of grief.  but as i've gotten older i've embraced the value of 'play,' and maybe more than anything else, my mystery novel embodies my desire for play.  i wanted to play with the setting of the novel, with the characters, with the plot and its resolution. 

i discovered and allowed all sorts of (to me) fascinating interconnections among my characters to evolve.  i had a general idea of where i was going with the book - i think that must be pretty necessary in a mystery novel - but it became much much richer as i went along, and i was frankly really amazed by the internal cohesiveness of so much that emerged.

the whole process of emergence, the feeling of emergence - where was all of this coming from? - was very exciting and powerful.  it all came from a mysterious somewhere and i never knew what was coming next.  my plot-line and story could probably have been written in twenty pages, but instead two hundred have become manifest.  the color and texture of the experience have been quite wonderful.  i've often wished i'd had more training as a painter or other visual artist, and perhaps my book is not as intellectual as might be hoped for because it is something of a substitution for a painterly experience, but there is room for many genres - "in my Father's house, there are many mansions" - isn't that so? 

well, thanks for listening.  you may be hearing more about my novel as i move it toward publication.  i will keep you posted.

mummers as spiritual artists

i've written about what the mummers meant to me as a child, now i'd like to write a little about what they mean to me now.  (by the way this picture is taken from the cover of Patricia Anne Masters' book, "The Philadelphia Mummers, Creating Community Through Play" )

i find them inspiring because they represent ordinary working-class people expressing their spiritual creativity in a free and exuberant manner.  these folks allow their spirit and zest for living to spill out creatively filling space and air with color and sound.  against the backdrop of an often grim and always gritty-gray environment they project an alternative.  due to their circumstances in life, they aren't a part of the mainstream culture of art or performance, don't have much money, haven't gone to art school, or studied choreography (until very recently), and no one is paying them to perform the way they do.  They are just doing it! and have been doing it for hundreds of years, and for over one hundred years in the present form as a parade on Broad Street.  This is a grass-roots phenomenon, a manifestation of the creative surge that comes up from the ground, fills the body and spills out in an arciform design, not unlike the shape of the back-boards pictured above in these Handsome and Handsome-Trim suits, or in the shape created by nature in the white peacock, pictured below, which reminds me of some of the old Handsome Suits and Handsome Trim suits that featured a white snowflake motif.

 

since reconnecting with this aspect of my childhood - the mummers day parade -  i can recognize where i got the idea that ordinary people, working class people, had some sort of inalienable right to create art.  that the rich and privileged do not have sole domain over creativity.  (this has really been an issue for me, due to the fact that when i was young i was unable to swing the necessaries to attend art school myself - long story of 'lack of support' around preparing myself to study art in any kind of formal way.  another time.)  of course, we see and acknowledge that truth in the areas of african-american music, for example, or in appalachian blue-grass music.  perhaps in music, more than elsewhere.  and i'm certainly not saying that study doesn't add grace, refinement, complexity and many other features to the various art forms.  i simply mean that the impulse to create something beautiful, uplifting, fun and self-expressive was demonstrated for me by the mummers year after year from an early age.  even the forms of their costumes, such as the Handsome Trim suits, express the impulse of creativity and expression, and is it any wonder i picked that message up?  yes, we were working class folks, for sure, and thanks to our times a number of us moved up in terms of income and even class, but not everyone.  i have an abiding appreciation for what we had and still have, and i see the joy of that treasure expressed in the mummers day parade.

new year mummer's day parade

i can't let the month of january go by without writing something about the new year's day mummers' parade in philadelphia - "place where I was partly raised."

every january 1st my mother and grandmother, or if my father were home from sea, my father would take me 'downtown' on the subway to stand in the freezing cold and wind on Broad Street, sometimes in snow flurries, to see the Mummers' Parade.  All of us kids in Philly could do the Mummers' Strut, but not all of us participated in the parade.  That privilege was reserved for people, sometimes whole families, who belonged to the various clubs, often neighborhood or ethnic community organizations, which prepared costumes, music, routines and themes all year long for the coming of the great New Year's Day parade.

We participated by *being there,* by getting cheered up, entertained, and entranced.  My mother's favorites were the string-bands.  Their performance was often in question if the weather was less than pristine, and so we would strain our ears to hear them approaching.  We could hear them before we could see the round, square or oval backboards with their bright colors, magical feathers and sparkling baubles, approaching in ranks to the accompaniment of up-beat string music. 

Looking back from here I can see what a dynamic, magical,  positive start the Mummers' Parade gave us every New Year. 

My mother wanted me to grow up as a Catholic so I think she downplayed the significance in our lives of the paganesque Mummers' Day ritual.  Although many of the Mummers are also from Catholic backgrounds, I think it goes without saying that the roots of mummery, both in Europe and America, go back to pre-Christian cultures that were absorbed into Catholicism.  Similar activities include Louisiana's Mardi Gras and other Caribbean and east coast festivals of mummery, and are found notably also in Ireland, Sweden and Russia, to my knowledge.

The root neighborhoods of the Shooters (the original name of those later called 'Mummers' by outsiders) were in the old formerly native american enclaves in Philadelphia where mixed European-African-Native American people worked along the river, later to be joined by many European immigrants and melded into what I call 'old Philadelphians' (not referring to the so-called 'first proprietor' family lines here).  Anyway, people often trace the start of the Shooters to the 'Swedes' who lived down there along the river, but of course, the early swedes in Philly - people who arrived in the early 1600's - were *men* who created children with 'someone' (native american women?) who were later self-identified as Swedes.  but of course, my pleas for native-american/european contributions to early american society seem to be falling into thin air.  nevertheless, i state my paltry case yet again.

The overall impression of the Mummers on my psyche can be summed up in this list of words: exciting, beautiful, musical, spherical, wheels, whirling, spinning, rotating, ringing, revolving, pivoting, circulating, curved, ruffled, bulbous, annular, dome-shaped, sickle-shaped, colorful, gyrating, laughing, arching, curving, crescent-shaped, glittering, gleaming, comical, imaginative, arciform, circular, coiled, waving, dancing, and finally last but not least, strutting!

there are quite a few good resources out there on the Mummers of Philly.  I'll just list a few:

the Mummers' Museum, available online
Strut! a DVD by Robert Downey Jr's father, Robert Downey Sr, a must for all Mummers' fans with footage of the 2000 parade
Oh! Dem Golden Slippers, by Claude Welch, an excellent older book on the subject - the classic!
Life, Liberty and the Mummers, by E.A. Kennedy III, an African-American author from New Orleans who became interested in the subject and who features oodles of photos and also some very interesting text
The Philadelphia Mummers, Building Community through Play, by Patricia Anne Masters, mostly text, perhaps a doctoral dissertation looking at the working-class roots of Philly's Mummers, a good read

sewn sun

 

i knitted this blanket for a friend who doesn't need it now, and i decided to keep it because it inspires me every morning when I wake up and see it at the foot of my bed, as if the sun had come down to earth to greet me.  i find it very inspiring.  it lifts my spirits.  it's not perfect, as my friend says it's just part of the flawed beauty of the world.  to my mind, it turned out looking like a piece of old folk-art, and perhaps that is close to what it is, because it is new folk-art.  i have no training, just decided i wanted to knit something on the little birch sticks, something my danish ancestors might have knitted.  the center is from 'danish lace treasures' and is called 'judith' or something like that, and it has 'sheaf of wheat borders, an edging of 'leaf and acorn' and i did some simple braiding to cover up unsightly seams.  yes, it's not perfect, and i love it.

more on spiritual artistry

i've received a lot of positive feedback on the post on spiritual artistry.  two friends who do a lot of cooking, gardening and painting as an expression of their spiritual artistry, with meditation and prayer being their number one activity.  also a friend of mine who is a long-time buddhist nun wrote to me, “I read and loved your description of a spiritual artist on your blog. I feel like that, too. It seems  to me it's about HOW one is being, rather than WHAT one is doing. About the quality of actions, thoughts and words. I feel like that is always what I am striving for, to align the quality of my thought and therefore consequently of my words and actions with my highest conception of  Spirit, which to me equates with universal unconditional all-pervading ever-available Love and Good. That seems a little like the artist who is seeing a form in a block of marble and trying to chip away what is not the form or a painter who has a way of seeing they want to portray by using a particular style and subject, i. e. perhaps the Impressionists being one example in concrete art.  Or spiritual qualities being analogous to colors and their varying shades, we are painting our lives with the substance of them in the ideas we live out. In Buddhism, this is also called mindfulness, or how one pays attention to one's life and what one does with its content, not really "minding" what the content itself is. That's what occurs to me about spiritual artistry, a lovely concept, or path.”

coincidentally, or synchronistically, this week, right after developing my concept of Spiritual Artistry, i started in to an artist's way group.  our group is called 'gratitude, compassion and creativity' facilitated by susan louie at the albany adult school here in the bay area.  i've never read the famous book "the artist's way" before, even though a number of people over the years have told me i would like it, but now that i have finally begun reading it i find i do feel thoroughly in synch with its message.  i've actually come to a lot of the same conclusions through my own process.  anyway, all of this has led me to think more about that process, to re-member it.

back when i was in spiritual direction with a formerly cloistered contemplative nun, she used to say that i was sublimating my creativity into my prayer life.  she was right.  i was always a very creative kid - what kid, really, isn't - but also experienced my creativity a lot in a 'spiritual' form - not necessarily religious, but spiritual.  because i grew up in an old-world community, prayer and devotional practices were common and i participated in those and experienced my creativity in that form.  i also did free art classes and theater classes in our underprivileged neighborhood thanks to humanitarian individuals who were willing to work with us.

when i arrived at my teens and early twenties i envisioned a creative career for myself in the arts, but my parents were very much against it, and the things that were happening around me at the time, many of which were blended into the artistry of our community, were actually quite traumatic.  not only did we have the unrest of the vietnam war tearing the neighborhood apart, but also an upsurge in drug use, suicide, and various sexual traumas were going on.  for me, so much of all of that was associated in my mind with the artistic path i was trying to be on, that i felt compelled to completely turn my back on an artistic career or way of life, and go on

spiritual artistry

i've decided to create a new category and share it with the world.  Spiritual Artistry. 

A Spiritual Artist is similar to an ordinary artist except that the materials they are working with cannot be expressed through means that are readily picked up by the senses.  An ordinary artist sees, hears, feels, thinks, dreams, absorbs, integrates or explores and then expresses his or her experience through color, line, form, sound or word.  The spiritual artist also sees, hears, thinks, dreams, absorbs, integrates and explores, but doesn't necessarily express his or her experience.  He or she is having primarily an internal, private experience.  Unless he or she is also an ordinary artist too, these experiences may be expressed only through his or her moods, words, behaviors or gestures.  This kind of expression is relatively subtle and often missed, riding as it does somewhat above or somewhat below the radar of ordinary perceptions.  Just as some art is more appreciated in certain circles than in others, the spiritual artist is not necessarily appreciated  or even recognized.  And like the ordinary artist, the spiritual artist is always engaged in his or her materials and process.

I write this because I feel that I am a spiritual artist.  I've had a wide streak of spiritual experience ever since childhood, was trained minimally but at least enough to see as an artist so that I could develop a strong sense of form, line and color, etc, and have been fortunate enough to study with people who were able to give me a sense of the more esoteric layers of meaning behind the forms and images I experience, especially visually, even though the part where I learned any skills for expressing my perceptions has been lacking.  I've also had a long history of working with words in an attempt to express my process.  I've often called what I do 'prayer' but it is more than asking-and-receiving kinds of prayer, and has involved personal transformation, growth in appreciation and sensitivity, and has gradually changed the way I see the world quite dramatically.  After approximately sixty years of having this experience, I feel it is okay to refer to myself as a 'spiritual artist.'  It's a term I've coined that is very meaningful to me and gives a name to something that up until now has been nameless.  This describes best what I am doing with my time on earth, and I'm happy to have some way of expressing myself.

Does this term express what you do?

persimmon

 
I haven't written a word to this blog for some time now, but that's only because a lot has been happening.  For one thing, I've been taking a wonderful watercolor (wet-on-wet) class with Kate Weese for three weeks.  Her work is beautiful, but it isn't well-represented on the web.  But anyway, this persimmon with pear leaves is something I did in the class.  We'll be taking a break over the holidays and will resume in January.

I appreciate getting away from the written word for a while.  I find the drawing and painting 'relaxing.'  I 'drew' these images in water first, then applied color.  It felt liberating not to work with a conventional drawing first.  I'm looking forward to doing more of this.